Demystifying the US Supreme Court: Ideological Shifts and the Role of the Chief Justice

🔑 The Supreme Court's decisions are not solely determined by justices' ideology or partisanship.

⚖️ Justices' ideology can change over time, as demonstrated by empirical evidence.

📈📉 Justices' positioning on the liberal-conservative scale can vary throughout their career.

📈 Supreme Court justices change their positions often in relation to the decisions they choose.

🌈 Martin-Quinn scores measure the ideology of justices over time and help determine who is conservative and who is liberal on the court.

👥 The ideology of individual justices can shift, and the chief justice line has changed over time.

👥 Supreme Court justices can change their political ideologies over time.

📊 The Supreme Court's ideological balance can shift over the years.

⚖️ There is a swing vote on the Supreme Court depending on the issue at hand.

✔️ Justices on the Supreme Court do not always vote together based on ideology.

🤝 Many justices often agree with each other on case decisions.

🔀 There is ideological agreement among both liberal and conservative justices.

🔍 The Supreme Court appears divisive because we often hear about cases that involve ideological divides.

⚖️ There are many cases where all the justices agree, but they don't receive as much attention.

👨‍⚖️ Clarence Thomas is considered the most conservative justice, not Antonin Scalia.

👤 👈 👥 President Obama did not appoint left-wing activists to the Supreme Court.

📊 📈 President Obama's nominated justices were slightly less liberal than him.

🗓️ ✅ Presidents can submit nominations and get confirmation votes in their last year.

💡 The confirmation of a justice is dependent on the agreement between the president and the Senate.

⚖️ Historically, nominations for justices are typically submitted and confirmed during the presidents' last years in office.

🗳️ The American people's decisions during the election can influence the type of justice they want on the court.